And We Burn
by MJFastlane
Summary: The Protectobots are a search and rescue team, and occasionally their responsibilities as such take them to dying planets in the throes of an apocalypse. This is the result of one such occurrence. Rated for imagery and implied violence.


Hmm. It's been a while since I posted anything over here. This one's been up on lj for a week or so now, and I figure i ought to post it over here too. Written for a prompt from kinrazza on lj: Protectobots - 'Don't walk away, don't walk away, oh, when the world is burning.' It's a bit of a departure from the norm for me, but I think, now that I've had some time to reflect, that I like it, and I hope that you (the readers) will appreciate it too.

**Warnings:** This fic contains descriptions of a post-apocalyptic world, character death both explicit and alluded to, and descriptions of injuries inflicted to both aliens and Transformers. I'm not sure they're exactly graphic, but I think it's best to warn people anyway. This story is not a nice one. Fic also contains an OC, though he is a very minor character at best.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. That priviledge lies with Hasbro/Takara, and various licensees. I do not make any money from this, nor do I intend to. I write only with the intention to entertain, mainly myself but hopefully others too.

Please note this story is set in Season Three of the G1 cartoon, when everyone was Having Adventures in Space. If you manage to get through it all, please take the time to review and tell me what you think.

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Ash everywhere, and flames and heat and the suffocating feel of the air despite the fact that they do not need to breathe. It's been like this for some time now; how much time is hard to tell, because internal chronometers mean nothing now that there is no wireless network to sync them with. They are still running on Earth time which is nothing like the time of this place where days drag on forever and the nights are barely there at all.

It's a wasteland, a planet in the final stages of its life; an apocalypse they've stumbled on before their time. As they canvass the ruins of a civilisation for the faint blink of an Autobot distress signal, they cannot avoid the ruins of those who civilised the place. It hurts them, spark-breaking and strut-deep, because these aliens are so similar to humans, except for the whole reptilian rather than mammalian aspect of their physical structure. But they are sentient, in that limited-lifespan way of the humans, and they must have been young and hopeful and everything else that they can see in the humans too.

At one point, they come across a dying alien. She is mangled beyond belief; blind in all four eyes, one leg ending in a stump of bone and rancid flesh at the knee joint, the other crushed and shredded nearly as badly. And still she clings to life stubbornly for the sake of a child who is curled up in the shelter of her arms, despite the fact the child is dead. In her delusion she probably cannot tell, and as they approach her they can hear her pleading with some unknown assailant – be it the planet itself or another of her kind – to spare her child; her poor dead child.

The ash clings to everything, and the fires continue to burn.

It hurts, but in the end, the most merciful thing they can do is give her a bullet to the brain, ending her misery in a world gone blind, burnt and insane. Groove leads First Aid away, and the pair turn their backs as Blades ends it, while Streetwise and Hot Spot stand silently like a guard of honour, or perhaps horror would be more apt.

And still that is not the worst thing they have seen. What hurts the most is when they bypass the remains of towns and cities, and the pain is palpable in the air, even from five or ten or twenty miles away. It takes all of their willpower not to let the images of friend fighting friend fighting lover fighting family fighting neighbour fighting stranger, of everyone fighting everyone else for the scraps of a shelter or the barest hint of possible nutrition.

And still the ash thickens the air, and still the fires burn everywhere.

It takes them perhaps seven of the dying planet's days to find the fallen Autobot. By Earth time, it is something like two and a half weeks; seventeen days of death and destruction and _despair_. Seventeen days where their compassion and their drive is slowly whittled away until the only things left are spark-crushing sorrow and a slowly building feeling that things have always been this way.

Seventeen days, and they find the Autobot, ironically named Firestarter, trapped under the remains of what was once a thirty-story building. His plating is half-melted, fusing him to the ground on which he lays, and one arm is completely missing. There is a shard of something that has severed the main struts in his back, so that he cannot operate his legs without extensive repairs. Still, he is alive and lucid, though in great pain, and the gratitude on his ruined face is painted so clearly that the Protectobots throw themselves whole-sparked into extracting him from the desolate planet that was so nearly his final resting place.

It takes another two Earth days to extract Firestarter, as First Aid is determined to keep him stabilised as much as possible. Firestarter doesn't say much, now that they have found him, but he is pleasantly cooperative unless they ask him about what has happened to the planet. On that topic he refuses to talk, and they do not push him, because in all honesty they do not really want to know.

It is an overwhelming relief to leave the dying planet behind them, when they finally manage to sort Firestarter to the point where it is safe to move him. The atmosphere of doom and misery has worked its way into them all, to varying degrees of success. Streetwise is withdrawn, Hot Spot is solemn, First Aid is for once openly upset, Blades is remarkably unenthusiastic and Groove is so many things at once it is hard to put a name to it, though horrified and sorrowful would probably come close.

They leave.

The ash begins to settle, and the fires are more smoke than flame.

Days and months and years on, and if visions of a burning, dying world haunt them, they never say.


End file.
